Jul 4, 2009
Jul 3, 2009
buzzed off
I just got back from the hairdresser. My hairdresser is a very bossy, glamorous Vietnamese woman. She's also a friend of the family of about 20 years.
She squeezed my appointment in during her one day work week, post San Francisco holiday, pre July 4th holiday. Anyway, She refuses to cut my hair the way I want it. Well, she has once, but that's it. And yet I continue to go there. It's a combination of co dependence, loyalty and masochism, I suppose. Much like my life.
The other day, another Vietnamese friend of a friend told me, "Oh, that's how all Vietnamese hairdressers are. They don't listen." She told me this before I even had the chance to mention my problem to her, so I guess it's true.
I think she was particularly distracted today telling me about her best friend's husband's multiple affairs. Anyway, she did a really botched up job. It looked all right in the front, but when I got home and looked more closely, the back was a mess. Even my mother commented on it.
So today I bought a hair clipper and cut the rest off myself.
I now look like I've just escaped Auschwitz.
Or more like the one overfed prisoner who's been scamming the others for their crusts of bread, you know. Still, there's some small comfort knowing that at least my students aren't around to make fun of me. That's what, I guess, friends are for.
She squeezed my appointment in during her one day work week, post San Francisco holiday, pre July 4th holiday. Anyway, She refuses to cut my hair the way I want it. Well, she has once, but that's it. And yet I continue to go there. It's a combination of co dependence, loyalty and masochism, I suppose. Much like my life.
The other day, another Vietnamese friend of a friend told me, "Oh, that's how all Vietnamese hairdressers are. They don't listen." She told me this before I even had the chance to mention my problem to her, so I guess it's true.
I think she was particularly distracted today telling me about her best friend's husband's multiple affairs. Anyway, she did a really botched up job. It looked all right in the front, but when I got home and looked more closely, the back was a mess. Even my mother commented on it.
So today I bought a hair clipper and cut the rest off myself.
I now look like I've just escaped Auschwitz.
Or more like the one overfed prisoner who's been scamming the others for their crusts of bread, you know. Still, there's some small comfort knowing that at least my students aren't around to make fun of me. That's what, I guess, friends are for.
Jul 2, 2009
Why I Live at the P.O.
Come the Fourth of July, I can't help but think of Eudora Welty's 1941 short story,
"Why I Live at the P.O." It's one of my very favorites.
Here's the beginning:
If you haven't already, read the rest here
(which I'm pretty sure no one will...but anyway...)
"Why I Live at the P.O." It's one of my very favorites.
Here's the beginning:
"I WAS GETTING ALONG FINE with Mama, Papa-Daddy and Uncle Rondo until my sister Stella-Rondo just separated from her husband and came back home again. Mr. Whitaker! Of course I went with Mr. Whitaker first, when he first appeared here in China Grove, taking "Pose Yourself" photos, and Stella-Rondo broke us up. Told him I was one-sided. Bigger on one side than the other, which is a deliberate, calculated falsehood: I'm the same. Stella-Rondo is exactly twelve months to the day younger than I am and for that reason she's spoiled..."
If you haven't already, read the rest here
(which I'm pretty sure no one will...but anyway...)
Jersey wisdom
Apparently, Jersey has a direct pipeline to Marrero, because this is exactly how it was (ok, is) there. There's some Buddha-level insight going on here. For example:
"Women always have a strike up on men. We've always got our bodies (if you keep it in shape) and we've always got the check to cash."
Found by way of dlisted and Colleen and probably a million other sites too. I'm sure it'll spread like wildfire.
Jul 1, 2009
Four things recently found on the ground:
Bottle of Upper 10, circa 1960(?)
Found: in a cache of other vintage bottles, exposed by low water on the banks of a small bayou outside of Baton Rouge.
Currently: on my windowsill, holding a sprig of stolen rosemary from the neighbors.
Decapitated angel.
Found: backyard, buried in the sand. Smelling strangely of vanilla.
Currently: impaled on a stake in the garden, as a warning to other rogue cherubs.
Pristine pair of Foster Grants.
Found: Target parking lot.
Currently: on my face.
"Crazy Penis" Cd, title scrawled in what seems to be lipstick.
Found: corner of Coliseum and 6th street.
Disappointingly, neither porn nor psychotic-woman-scorned created revenge. Actual band. Electronic-ish music.
Currently: in my car.
Jun 30, 2009
the Goods (a summer rerun)
Once upon a time, when I was a lonely kid, come weekend nights, I would hole myself up in my room and watch the string of Britcoms shown on our local PBS station.
They were a delightful window into strange, but somewhat familiar, world...separated not only by space, but also time, since most of them were a decade or so delayed. I liked them all, but my favorite was The Good Life.
It was about a young couple who give up the rat race to start a farm, in suburban London, much to the horror of their uptight neighbors. It first aired in the early
70s and seemed to be sort of playing on the last gasp of hippiedom.
The best part of the show, however, was watching Margo, the bitch queen played by Penelope Keith. Role model material!
She was always seemingly floating about in a chiffon caftan, sneering at the livestock of her cute neighbors and getting herself riled up at her milquetoast husband. Penelope went on to another Britcom, "To the Manor Born" in the early '80s, but it wasn't the same.
Here she is in action (sans chiffon, unfortunately):
They were a delightful window into strange, but somewhat familiar, world...separated not only by space, but also time, since most of them were a decade or so delayed. I liked them all, but my favorite was The Good Life.
It was about a young couple who give up the rat race to start a farm, in suburban London, much to the horror of their uptight neighbors. It first aired in the early
70s and seemed to be sort of playing on the last gasp of hippiedom.
The best part of the show, however, was watching Margo, the bitch queen played by Penelope Keith. Role model material!
She was always seemingly floating about in a chiffon caftan, sneering at the livestock of her cute neighbors and getting herself riled up at her milquetoast husband. Penelope went on to another Britcom, "To the Manor Born" in the early '80s, but it wasn't the same.
Here she is in action (sans chiffon, unfortunately):
Jun 28, 2009
a trip to the bookstore
A few feet into the door a pleasant woman gave me a photocopied sheet of coupons. A few feet later another pleasant woman tried to give me another. Economy's bad, I hear.
As is always the case in bookstores, I get overwhelmed and develop a fear of commitment and leave empty handed. But the coupon promised 25 percent off, so I decided to risk it and buy an expensive art book to replace the ones lost a few years ago in you-know-what
Blocking the aisle was a pretty early twenty something girl wearing red vinyl heels...and a white snood. That's right, a snood.
In 2009.
With her, was her "bff": a six foot six, 250 lb gay boy with highlighted hair, combed à la Zac Efron, mincing through the decorating books aisle like a chihuahua on a leash.
Miss Snood loaded up on a few hundred dollars worth of books, while her huge chihuahua barked pronouncements throughout the store about what he "loooooooooooooooved" and "h8ed!"
Finally they vacated the aisle.
Hmmmm...what should I buy? The art section was small, now that they'd pillaged it, but I finally, after a long time debating, decided on this:
I got an iced coffee instead.
Small, black, no sugar.
I mean really.
Not good merchandising strategy to have abs like that glaring accusingly at you when you're selling carbs, is it?
As I exited, Andrea Bocelli began operatically with what sounded suspiciously like Wham's classic "Careless Whisper"...in Italian. I lingered to hear the end, but when he started up (what sounded like) "Sukiyaki", I had to go.
As is always the case in bookstores, I get overwhelmed and develop a fear of commitment and leave empty handed. But the coupon promised 25 percent off, so I decided to risk it and buy an expensive art book to replace the ones lost a few years ago in you-know-what
Blocking the aisle was a pretty early twenty something girl wearing red vinyl heels...and a white snood. That's right, a snood.
In 2009.
With her, was her "bff": a six foot six, 250 lb gay boy with highlighted hair, combed à la Zac Efron, mincing through the decorating books aisle like a chihuahua on a leash.
Miss Snood loaded up on a few hundred dollars worth of books, while her huge chihuahua barked pronouncements throughout the store about what he "loooooooooooooooved" and "h8ed!"
Finally they vacated the aisle.
Hmmmm...what should I buy? The art section was small, now that they'd pillaged it, but I finally, after a long time debating, decided on this:
The "extraordinary insight into his world of glamour, sex and fame!" had nothing to do with it.
Leaving, I nearly caved into my sugar lust/heat/boredom. I got in line for a Extra Grande Mocha Frappuccino®.
Thankfully the abs of God intervened:
I got an iced coffee instead.
Small, black, no sugar.
I mean really.
Not good merchandising strategy to have abs like that glaring accusingly at you when you're selling carbs, is it?
As I exited, Andrea Bocelli began operatically with what sounded suspiciously like Wham's classic "Careless Whisper"...in Italian. I lingered to hear the end, but when he started up (what sounded like) "Sukiyaki", I had to go.
"Pride"
(the only known national news coverage at the time)
From the Huffington post:
Gay Weddings and 32 Funerals: Remembering the UpStairs Erik Ose
"...To fully understand recent events, it's important to remember a tragedy that happened thirty-five years ago, and how much things have changed for gays and lesbians since then.
On the last Sunday in June, 1973, a gay bar in New Orleans called the UpStairs Lounge was firebombed. The resulting blaze killed 32 people. At the time, the bar had recently served as the temporary home for the fledgling New Orleans congregation of the Metropolitan Community Church. Founded in Los Angeles in 1968, the MCC was the nation's first gay church...
That Sunday was the final day of Pride Weekend, the fourth anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising of 1969. Yet there was still no Gay Pride Parade in New Orleans. Almost two dozen gay bars dotted the French Quarter, but gay life in the city remained largely underground...
Original site of the UpStairs Lounge at 141 Chartres Street as it looked in Spring, 2008.
Before moving worship services to their pastor's home earlier in June, congregation members had been holding services at the UpStairs on Sundays. But the bar was still a spiritual gathering place. There was a piano in one of the bar's three rooms, and a cabaret stage. Members would pray and sing in this room, and every Sunday night, they gathered around the piano for a song they had adopted as their anthem, United We Stand, by The Brotherhood of Man.
They sang the song that evening, with David Gary on the piano, a pianist who played regularly in the lounge of the Marriott Hotel across the street. The congregation members repeated the verses again and again, swaying back and forth, arm in arm, happy to be together at their former place of worship on Pride Sunday, still feeling the effects of the free beer special.
At 7:56 pm a buzzer from downstairs sounded, the one that signaled a cab had arrived. No one had called a cab, but when someone opened the second floor steel door to the stairwell, flames rushed in. An arsonist had deliberately set the wooden stairs ablaze, and the oxygen starved fire exploded. The still-crowded bar became an inferno within seconds.
The emergency exit was not marked, and the windows were boarded up or covered with iron bars. A few survivors managed to make it through, and jumped to the sidewalks, some in flames. Rev. Bill Larson, the local MCC pastor, got stuck halfway and burned to death wedged in a window, his corpse visible throughout the next day to witnesses below..."
You can read the rest here
Jun 27, 2009
Will be here in a few hours. Yeay!
I feel like I should be doing more homework (since, I'm ashamed to admit that I've only ever seen the movie once, a million years ago), or at least popping some dolls or something.
There's still time, I guess.
Anyway, there will be no need for a review, I'm sure, because everything I've seen by them has been wonderful.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
